Preview

More by Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones Oprah’s Book Club 2018 Selection

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit.

Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward - with hope and pain - into the future.

Tayari Jones Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow revolves around James Witherspoon's two families - the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters - the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle - she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another's lives. At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers - think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye - Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.

Tayari Jones Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members of this fractured family struggling with their own guilt - real and imagined.
At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage with all its promise of a family of her own. Her infertility changes her life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban landscape around her.

With prose that is both eloquent and unflinching, Jones charts the emotional journey of her characters as they explore the painful territory of truth and the healing landscape of forgiveness.

Tayari Jones Award-winning novelist Tayari Jones delivers a story based on the 1979-1980 Atlanta child murders. Told from the perspective of three fifth-grade classmates, Leaving Atlanta is a vividly disturbing, but hopeful novel. Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia each share the same wish: to be accepted. But reality soon crashes into their world, bringing with it fear and confusion. Children in their class are being kidnapped. Suddenly, popularity and recognition don't seem so important. Making it home safely through the menacing streets of Atlanta is an everyday challenge. Even their parents are unnerved by this violent outbreak. Who will protect these children now?

The convincing characters, voiced by a full cast of narrators, make this a haunting and effective work. Leaving Atlanta confronts complicated and sensitive subjects with just the right amount of sorrow and promise.

Tayari Jones Award-winning novelist Tayari Jones delivers a story based on the 1979-1980 Atlanta child murders. Told from the perspective of three fifth-grade classmates,
Leaving Atlanta is a vividly disturbing, but hopeful novel.
Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia each share the same wish: to be accepted. But reality soon crashes into their world, bringing with it fear and confusion. Children in their class are being kidnapped. Suddenly, popularity and recognition don't seem so important. Making it home safely through the menacing streets of Atlanta is an everyday challenge. Even their parents are unnerved by this violent outbreak. Who will protect these children now?

The convincing characters, voiced by a full cast of narrators, make this a haunting and effective work. Leaving Atlanta confronts complicated and sensitive subjects with just the right amount of sorrow and promise.